God Sees You – Proverbs 15:3

IMBd summarizes the 1998 Will Smith, Gene Hackman film, Enemy of the State, this way:  “A lawyer becomes targeted by a corrupt politician and his N.S.A. goons when he accidentally receives key evidence to a politically motivated crime.”  What was so crazy about the movie at the time was how it depicted the government’s ability to watch everything you were doing.  Are our lives really under total scrutiny?

The eyes of the LORD are in every place,

keeping watch on the evil and the good. (Proverbs 15:3, ESV)

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town and he’s checking his list to see if you’ve been naughty or nice.  And the only one who could possibly know enough to give him this list is Yahweh.  Yahweh’s eyes, Yahweh’s ability to see all that takes place in every place, are keeping watch on the evil and the good.

“Naughty and nice” seem like watered down versions of evil and good.  We might chuckle at a child who tries to hide the vase he broke so he won’t be found out.  We’re less inclined to laugh at the adult who does the same.  But in either case the attempt is to manage one’s life needs apart from God, a disease we were born with.  We just won’t have God running our show.

The proverb does not say what happens when God discovers evil or good (and those could happen in the same person), probably because the answer to that is too complex to contain in one proverb.  But other proverbs talk about the judgment that will come on evil and the reward for good.  And each takes many forms as we move toward the ultimate day of judgment.

This proverb is fair warning.  You do nothing in secret.  God never ceases paying attention to you.  Do you find that confining (Psalm 139:5) or comforting (Psalm 139:17)?